Sectors

When African telecom companies started to emerge in the late 1990s, many scoffed. How could it be, went the general chatter, that Africans have money to spend on telecoms? Several multi-millionaires later, after the historic sale of Mo Ibrahim's Celtel for $3.4bn and the rise of South African giant MTN, investors piled in.

The scramble for Zimbabwe's vast but largely untapped minerals intensified this week with Russian clinching lucrative deals that analysts fear would see President Robert Mugabe's broke government mortgaging the resources.